This is really good, giving awards to living legends. But there’s a problem. There’s a problem. See, I’m a legend in the making.

—Star Trek star, McGill University alum and one-time Stratford thesp William Shatner, on receiving the festival’s prestigious Legacy Award for 2013 (previous recipients: Sound of Music star Christopher Plummer and Downton Abbey resident Dame Maggie Smith). At Monday night’s fundraising gala at the Four Seasons, the 82-year-old Montreal native reminisced about acting in Stratford in the 1950s, including the time he had to sub in for a sick Christopher Plummer in the festival’s 1956 staging of Henry V, even though he’d never rehearsed the play out loud before. Shatner’s unlikely triumph that night, according to Plummer, is what clinched his destiny as a world-famous star—and, all humility aside, a Canadian legend.